


It All Comes Crashing Down

by Automode



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: (or at least Chikage's version of it), Brief mention of torture and blood, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon, off screen character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Automode/pseuds/Automode
Summary: Eyes flicking to the top of the paragraph again he rereads the text, the words just won’t sink in as real. Each time his eyes read the paragraph it remains exactly the same. That doesn’t make any sense at all, the mission was so simple. December’s been in the field for 10 years now and August was an agent for years before they both joined. Nails break his skin as he clenches his fist tighter. The pain doesn’t wake him up from this nightmare, nor the strange trance his mind has fallen into trying to comprehend the words in the email as the truth. He knows the language well, it was the second language he learnt and if anything, these days he speaks it far better than his first. He knows he isn’t reading anything wrong but every time his eyes go back to the top of the paragraph, he hopes that he is and that the words don’t mean what he knows they do.Posted for Gekkagumi Week Day Four: Accessories, Mourning
Kudos: 12





	It All Comes Crashing Down

**Author's Note:**

> Just Chikage finding about about August's death and December's 'betrayal', fun things like that

Towel around his waist and a good deal of the lethargy a long haul flight leaves him with washed down the drain of the hotel room shower, he finally feels like himself again. Another week another country, another city; he’d been here last month too. He’s travelling so much at the moment that he’s barely stepping foot in the hideout that’s home for the three of them right now. Well, that’s not too much of an issue, as long as he gets to be together with them again occasionally, he still has a home, he still has his family. Catching himself before he goes anything approaching August level sappy, he shrugs on one of the hotel’s robes and picks up his laptop bag. They would have completed that information retrieval mission while he was in the air, he’s likely got an email regarding that. Probably a selfie of August with a sleeping December waiting for him too.

Hotel wifi is never to be trusted. Selecting the name of his portable router he waits for the device to connect. He heard last time about a small family run Thai place in the area that he hadn’t gotten the chance to check out, once he’s caught up with what he missed while in transit he’ll head off to find that. This time around he doesn’t have anything lined up asides from the meetings he’s here to attend, he’ll have a lot more freedom than when he was juggling running missions at night and being a perfect company employee during the day like last time. It’s a good thing that unlike a certain someone, he’s never needed to get much sleep.

As his laptop connects, emails start to come through and a notification in the corner of his screen notifies him that he’s being accessed remotely. Well, perhaps he spoke too soon about having free time here after all. His laptop being remotely accessed usually means he’s having mission briefs and target files loaded onto it. Ignoring that for later, he clicks into his emails. August’s emails to him are never written professionally at all and while he might roll his eyes at the tone he uses, they’re so quintessentially August that if he were to change to a more professional tone, he’d find himself missing them.

Three new mails.

None from August, none from December either. Strange. Even without running them through decoding software he knows who those emails are from. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong. Trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach he selects the first mail. August is too experienced to mess up something that simple, even if they’d been caught there’s no way he wouldn’t have managed to get them out of it and December… he doesn’t give December enough credit. December can be a right nuisance but he’s every bit as capable of an agent as any other.

The last time he’d received official correspondence rather than personal for something like this, December had been in hospital for a week. Even then, he’d still received a message from August a few hours after informing him more personally. As the email on his screen reloads itself, words now in place of nonsense , one hand balls into a fist, knuckles white as he starts to scroll.

_April,_

_We regret to inform you that during a mission taking place on the evening of December 3 rd (JST), two casualties were had. The body of August has been retrieved (cause of death: bullet wound, blood loss) but we have been unable to locate December’s. A witness captured from those who ambushed them confirmed for us that he went over the edge of a cliff. Given the height of the fall, December too, is presumed to be dead._

Eyes flicking to the top of the paragraph again he rereads the text, the words just won’t sink in as real. Each time his eyes read the paragraph it remains exactly the same. That doesn’t make any sense at all, the mission was so simple. December’s been in the field for 10 years now and August was an agent for years before they both joined. Nails break his skin as he clenches his fist tighter. The pain doesn’t wake him up from this nightmare, nor the strange trance his mind has fallen into trying to comprehend the words in the email as the truth. He knows the language well, it was the second language he learnt and if anything, these days he speaks it far better than his first. He knows he isn’t reading anything wrong but every time his eyes go back to the top of the paragraph, he hopes that he is and that the words don’t mean what he knows they do.

Closing his eyes and swallowing down any emotions that may try to gather in response to the new information, he forces himself to keep reading. At least while he’s not processing this as real he can get that much done. He won’t be allowed time to mourn and he can’t afford to let himself cry, he knows that much, but he doesn’t know how he will react once this all sinks in and that’s the scariest part.

_The man we have in custody has revealed that information regarding the infiltration was leaked to them and a team was laying in wait for the two. While we cannot as of yet discern his motivation for such a move, we can confirm that the leaked information came from the agent formerly known as December himself._

This is a nightmare. None of it makes sense. December wouldn’t betray them, December was part of their family too. Partners, a bond so close that he’d trust him with anything other than not trying to sneak sugary foods into his curries. The memory twitches his lip upwards slightly, as annoying as he is, was, he was fond of that in a way. That of all things is what has things starting to sink in. There won’t be any more dinners at hideout tables eating food charred by August or curries December refuses to even try. Breathing in deep he fights back the surge of emotions that comes with that.

August is gone and it’s December’s fault. He’d told December he wouldn’t forgive him if August died because of him, but he hadn’t expected anything like that to actually happen. If August had died because of him ever, he’d expected it to be because he’d fallen asleep or gotten into a fight with someone he couldn’t handle and August had ended up a casualty. Even those situations had been hard to think about but the reality is much harder. What’s worse is that the bastard had gone and died too, he can’t even make him pay for what he’s done.

Taking his hand off his track pad he runs fingers through his hair. There’s more to read. He wants nothing more than to ignore the email entirely, to wipe his memory. To go to sleep and wake up tomorrow with it never having happened. He can’t do that though, that isn’t how things work. One by one he detangles his fingers from his hair before reaching back towards the track pad to bring the next paragraph fully into view.

_An investigation will be launched into your own possible involvement in the incident. Following will be emails regarding the specifics of that. If found innocent you will continue your mission as Utsuki Chikage and take on the duties of the agent formerly known as August in addition to your own. The Organisation will take care of all matters related to Penny Candy…_

After that things trail off into formalities, things that seem so ridiculously mundane that they may as well not even be included. It feels like a joke that they’d even think he’d give any thoughts to the goddamn sweets shop when faced with this news, or care at all that the lease of the hideout is being transferred into Chikage’s name. As he finally reaches the end of the email his hand pauses. He feels like he’s been hit by a truck, there are so many layers of emotion building within him and trying to figure out which ones he can confront, which ones to suppress is all at once overwhelming. He shouldn’t let any of them slip through, that’s the way they trained him after all.

A pop-up notifies him that data from his hard drive is being uploaded. Time passes strangely. He feels like its hours that he’s sat there, trying to take everything in and trying to hold in the urges to react. He knows what interrogations by The Organisation are like, they’re not pretty, but that’s something he’s trained for. He’s used to being tortured and beaten for information, he can take the pain and new scars adding to the many before them. He doesn’t care about that. It’s the fact he’ll be berated about this, suspected himself, mocked and taunted by the idea that he could have been acting in league with December when in reality that’s the last thing he’d ever do.

It’s the last thing December would ever do too. Or at least the December he thought he knew but looking at that line of the email again, ‘ _we can confirm that the leaked information came from the agent formerly known as December’,_ they’re so certain of it. He had seen the mission plans, the building layout, the simple brief. There’s no way it could have turned out like this without someone leaking information. The only people who would have known the plans were the three of them and a handful of people working at the headquarters. It had to have been leaked.

Right under his nose and neither of them had suspected anything. Rage boils, overflowing and mixing with the urge to cry. He can’t give in to either of them. The human side that being around August had kept alive is as much a traitor as December was, fighting against his trained ability to remain collected no matter what. Gritting his teeth he moves on to the next email. He highly doubts he’ll get to complete the week he’s supposed to be doing here. Things start to feel weirdly disconnected from reality again as his eyes skim through the text, reading over the change of plans, how the contents of his laptop are being uploaded to The Organisation’s servers and how he has nothing to fear if he wasn’t involved in the leak.

A bitter laugh escapes his lips at the absurdity of it all. This isn’t how things were meant to go at all. This was supposed to be easy, in three weeks time he was supposed to be back in Japan with the two of them for Christmas, they were supposed to… He can’t finish that train of thought without feeling heat start to well up in his eyes and his nose itching strangely.

\------

Snow falls heavily outside as he closes and locks the door behind him. Tokyo really brought out the whole fanfare for Christmas this year didn’t it? There’s a limp to his walk as he moves to hang his coat up before bending down to remove his shoes. It’s eerily quiet in here alone, so different to the happy couples chatting happily on dates and Christmas carols playing in shopping centres. He tries not to think about the noise that’s missing inside here too much. Blood’s started to seep through the bandage on his ankle again, that one had been deep; he’ll have to change the dressing again.

At least the pain has given him something to focus on, dwelling on his emotions only opens him up to weakness, he can’t let himself do that. He’s spent years being stupid, weak, blinded by- cutting those thoughts off there he takes a deep breath. Right, he needs to get out of his travel clothes and check if any other dressings need to be changed. At least here he has August’s laptop to work from too which will speed things up in terms of information gathering.

Confident that everything’s suppressed he steps out of the entry way, socked feet sounding strangely loud, a light switch flicking on feeling confrontingly bright. He’ll get used to it, this is reality for him now. August might not be here, December may have betrayed them both, but it’s still home. It’s still a place to come back to with a roof and a bed, even as sparsely decorated as it is. He’ll get used to this, he has to.

Eyes scanning the room, things seem to be roughly where he expects them to be. He knows an agent travelled to Japan to search the place but from what he can tell, they were careful and didn’t just tear it up. There are a couple of flyers he doesn’t recognise on the table, a few envelopes he’ll have to deal with in time and…

A small, clear ziplock bag. A stainless steel ring inside.

He stops in his tracks. He knows exactly what that is as soon as he lays eyes on it. In that moment everything that he’s been suppressing feels like it comes rushing back, washing over him and breaking free of the chains he’s locked it in. Slowly he reaches out, as though moving too fast may make it crumble into dust. As his fingers close around the small bag he can already see the scratches from years of wear, the places where it’s worn a little thin and as he tips it out into his palm, a blood stain that he pretends not to acknowledge.

Closing his hand around the ring tight he feels the cold metal press into his skin, as though branding him as he tries to fight everything that’s come forwards back. Somehow his other hand is steady as he reaches for a chair, pulling it out just in time to collapse onto as the ring remains closed tight in his hand. Digging into his palm as he keeps his grip on one of the last remainders of the man who had brought the sun into his life. Cold, desolate and lonely now, he’s without him; a shell of his former self and as empty as the apartment now feels.

After what feels like hours he manages to unfurl his fingers. Somehow his hand remains steady, as he lifts it from his palm. Too small for his thumb he tries his pointer finger, then his index. As the ring slides over the knuckle to the base, his hand curls into a fist once more.

Closing his eyes he tries to keep it all inside. Like he was trained to. Death is an inevitability, in all lives but especially for people who live lives like they do… like he does. Even now he’s not allowed to mourn.

This place may have a roof, a bed, shelter and privacy but for the first time in years, April is without a home.


End file.
